Glenn Greenwald and the Pro-Al Qaeda Lobby

Glenn Greenwald is an angry little man fighting an endless war on the war on terror. Every extremist group has its extremists and Greenwald is considered on the edge by even much of the left.

Greenwald’s view of the free world is as polarized and simplistic as anything you will find among the cave dwellers of Afghanistan. America is a force of pure evil. A new Nazi Germany terrorizing Muslims for no legitimate reason at all. Israel is the Little Satan. European countries are Medium Satans, depending on how many Muslims they’re bombing at a given time.

What sets Greenwald apart is his tediously monomaniacal quality. Where other leftists at least pretend to do something besides rant about the Military-Industrial Complex and occasionally show some flexibility on an issue or two, such as Mali, Greenwald plays the Stalinist, the cold warrior of a new war who will never bend and never say a nice thing about the Great Satan in all its forms.

The Manichean worldview of the Greenwalds descends into Great Satan theology in which nothing can be the fault of the terrorists, because everything is already the fault of America. In a single article, Greenwald blames America for

1. Supporting the Mali government

2. Destabilizing the Mali government

3. Arming the Mali rebels

4. Helping bomb the Mali rebels

5. Causing more terrorism by being the cause of everything wrong with the world

There is no room for Al Qaeda to do anything, because in Greenwald’s world, America is already a kind of incompetent evil deity who has already done everywhere.

Like most of the Anti-War Left, Greenwald is unwilling to engage with the topic of Islamic terrorism, even as he writes countless articles about the War on Terror. It’s a little like dedicating your career to writing about firefighters without ever discussing arson.

When Greenwald does mention Islamic terrorists, they exist only as blowback or moral equivalence. America bombs people. So does Al Qaeda. Case closed at the court of moral idiocy.

There is no doubt that the Malian rebels have engaged in all sorts of heinous atrocities (“amputations, flogging, and stoning to death for those who oppose their interpretation of Islam”), but so, too, have Malian government forces

This single paragraph, coming at the very end of another of Glenn Greenwald’s marathon screeds, is his only concession to the actual reason for the Mali bombing. And it’s followed by the usual moral equivalence. The Mali rebels kill people. So does the Mali government.

Does the Mali government forced women to stay in their homes on pain of being flogged? Not a topic that Greenwald wants to discuss because his pro-Jihadist moral equivalence won’t hold up so well once the details are dealt with.

Furthermore the Mali rebels are not really rebels, many if not most of them are foreign Jihadists, part of Al Qaeda’s world tour. But again that damages the indigenous rebels narrative that Greenwald and the Anti-War left rely on.

“As French war planes bomb Mali, there is one simple statistic that provides the key context: this west African nation of 15 million people is the eighth country in which western powers – over the last four years alone – have bombed and killed Muslims – after Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and the Philippines.”

But is this key context really? And if it is key context, then what does it mean?

For obvious reasons, the rhetoric that the west is not at war with the Islamic world grows increasingly hollow with each new expansion of this militarism.

Greenwald implies then that the West is at war with Islam. But are these wars that the West began or are these wars that Islamists have begun against the West?

For that matter, Libya was an intervention that the Muslim world largely supported. And including the Philippines is stretching things even by Greenwald’s standards.

The one thing that Greenwald does not mention is Al Qaeda, despite Mali being a conflict centered around it. The evil of the United States, in all its incarnations, is always present in a Greenwald screed, but Al Qaeda, the central player is absent.

Like a man who always writes about firefighters rushing to the scenes of fires, but never about the arsonists, Glenn Greenwald has nothing to say about Al Qaeda. Nothing besides the same old circular claim. Blowback. America created Al Qaeda. Then America bombs Al Qaeda.

But America didn’t create Al Qaeda. Yet the Anti-War American Left helps sustain Al Qaeda, fights to free its terrorists from Gitmo, protects their rights and fights the drones that kill them.

The Anti-War Left has enlisted on Al Qaeda’s side, while doing its best to avoid any mention of the name.

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. He is completing a book on the international challenges America faces in the 21st century.

megapotamus

At least Greenwald is consistent. He and Cindy Sheehan are the last of that once numerous species; the Lefty Peacenik. There might be some useful service he can do yet. Yes, it certainly is true that the West is at war with Islam, contrary to many a pronouncement whether by Bush or Obama. But it does not take two to have a war. Islam has been waging war on all that is not Islam for, oh, a while now. Recognizing that is the first hurdle and, guess what? we still haven't cleared it.

Ar'nun

"He and Cindy Sheehan are the last of that once numerous species"

Oh you would be surprised. There are more of these imbiciles than there was during Viet Nam. Do not take these scum bags lightly. The really believe this crap and will do anything to undermine this country. And there true numbers would send chills down your spine.

Mary Sue

How much do you want to bet that all the pot, LSD, and magic mushrooms in the world found themselves inside Greenwald during his youth and it's perma-fried his brain?

Drakken

Greenwald and the rest of his traitorous ilk deserve only one thing, a gallows with a short drop.

You should do one with this character again, only trying to show support for the killing of citizens with drones while still going raving mad about how Obama is a crazy socialist!!! lol that would be hilarious! Seriously great piece, please keep it up!

You should do one with this character again, only pretending to show outrage for the killing of citizens with drones while still going raving mad about how Obama is the One we've been waiting for!!! lol that would be hilarious! Seriously great POS, please keep it up!

Mr. Polly

Most of the views the author of this article attributes to Greenwald are simply invented by the author and put in his mouth.

Loyal Achates

You don't think the author would actually bother to read and analyze Greenwald before writing an entire smear article about him, do you?

Ziggy Zoggy

Most of the views the author of this comment attributes to Greenfield are simply invented by the author and put in his mouth.

Mary Sue

says the Parrot.

Clap Hammer

Having read, or started to read, quite a few of Greenwald's Guardian offerings, I suspect that a lot of what he writes is confrontational and provocative just to encourage responses, (hits), to display to The Guardian's editors that his threads are 'popular'.

One thing missing is, when comparing him to Hitchens, Hitchens would at least cause me to re-evaluate my position, not necessarily change it, whereas, Greenwald is simply lightweight provocation.

Strange the 'tight' group of what are referred to as 'Glen bots' who comment on all his threads. Lunatic all of them

They had the fool on MSNBC the other day. Not an impressive person at all and in no way entertaining as Hitchens was.

Ziggy Zoggy

At least Greenwald has a good excuse for being a typical America-last misfit with an empty head. He looks like "Beaker" from "The Muppets." I'd resent the world of normal people too if I were a nerdy doll. All die-hard lefties are misanthropes and he must have become even more unhinged when he lost his acting job.

Ar'nun

Greenwald is actually a good representation of the new age Western Leftist. They all believe this or worse. According to many Leftists I have spoken with over the last 10 years, this is always how they saw both Afghanastan and Iraq. And French Leftists, in their resistance to those two wars, have expressed similar sentiments. Remember years ago there was a right wing movement to dissavow the French, even rename French Fries Freedom Fries? That's because the common opinion in France was that America illegaly invaded Afghanastan and Iraq, and were calling al Qaeda "Freedom Fighters". Der Spiegel even had an article about how Sadam Hussein and George Bush were secretely friends orchestrating the whole thing together.

Rob Roy

Glenn Greenwald has facts on his side. We are losing our amendment rights one at a time. The fourth amendment is gone forever and the first (Boston College is being bombarded with pressure to stop a talk about BDS) is being attacked as in the McCarthy era. The sixth amendment no longer is in effect. Whatever you think of Greenwald, I would hope you would fight to keep our rights. Have you noticed that every day, we get closer to a police state. It's creeping in. America is definitely on a slippery slope that seems impossible at this point to stem.

Mary Sue

he's pro al quaeda, and those guys aren't for ANYONE'S rights.

Ziggy Zoggy

Rob Goy,

since when have our amendment rights been honored, and what does that have to do with Greenwald's insane and juvenile claim that America is the source of all evil?

I give your comment 2 1/2 Chomskys.

Empress_Trudy

Many people make the mistake of projecting what they think Greenwald represents onto what he says. But in reality Greenwald isn't a leftist. He himself says he's not. He's no liberal or progressive. Greenwald is like Chomsky in that regard. He's actually a weird kind of anarchist. But the darker truth of Greenwald, from his long ago history to working with Pat Buchanan, to entertaining truthers, to entertaining Alex Jones to his legal work in defense of neo Nazi and convicted hate crime murderer Matt Hale you start to see a clearer picture. And that picture is that Greenwald is so far right wing that it bleeds into the furthest reaches of Pol Pot endorsing far left extremism. But at his core Greenwald is a totalitarian fascist. Much like the political history of Mussolini who started on the furthest left, moved to the Emma Goldman violent anarchists and wound up as a fascist, that is what Greenwald's arc is. Hating America hating Israle and frankly, being an antisemite, those are merely tools not his goal. His goal is a totalitarian world.

Human

Oh dear. Written Feb 5th, it’s now Oct 17 and not a single comment. Greenwald often gets 1000’s of comments per article. I wonder what that says about your writing Danny?